Nearly everyone it seems was very concerned about my sandals.  It was rare I would carry out a conversation with someone I had just met or friends I hadn’t seen in sometime without being questioned about my sandals. The story goes like this..

My brother and I were about to go to Europe and I decided I needed some new sandals, I found my way to the Target store and found some I liked.  They looked similar to rainbows, were comfortable, and cost $10, needless to say I was sold. We depart on our adventure.

By the time we get to Rome, we’ve walked many a mile, primarily in sandals, and my left one has started to acquire a hole in the heel.  This is ridiculous, I just bought these, and they cost me a whole $10.  There is no way I’m throwing these out yet. So, I kept wearing them and the hole steadily grew.  They’ve traveled from Spain to London and to Paris and Rome, Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, numerous trips to the beach, a vacation in Mexico, New York City, San Fransisco, Australia and New Zealand. Finally, it was time that they retired, in Australia they had acquired a new whole and the left one had grown to biblical proportions (maybe not). So they were ceremoniously replaced (not really) with a new pair at the end of my Australian experience.

The new ones are pretty typical australian — havaianas are everywhere there.  Hopefully this pair lasts as well as the one it replaces..

While he was here we were quite busy, he spent some time exploring Melbourne on his own, we also visited much of the city together. I was busy though for a few days preparing and taking my final, so our first real adventure was off to Sydney.  We stayed at the Mercantile Hotel, an Irish pub in the Rocks, and it was surprisingly nice. The bathrooms though shared were quite clean, and there seemed to be very few other guests which left a reasonably peaceful atmosphere — perhaps my favorite part though was the full Irish breakfast cooked for us complimentary every morning by simply walking down stairs.

We happened to arrive in Sydney and wander over to the Opera House at  the perfect time.  An afternoon storm was brewing in the distance, but it provided a beautiful rainbow.  However, the rainbow transformed from a simple rainbow into a double rainbow.  Eventually the primary rainbow started to refract and make smaller copies of itself directly below.  It was a beautiful sight now, the impending rain was not as welcome.

We toured the Opera House, explored the botanical gardens, ate on the harbour, and went to the aquarium.  So, yes, it was a whirlwind of tourist activity, but was still a good time.  The aquarium was a pleasant surprise in that Spongebob Squarepants had come to visit (haha, no joke — look at the pictures). Of course the event attracted a sea (get it?) of school age children frantically running through the aquarium turned amusment park.

We were quickly on our way up north to Cairns, and the Great Barrier Reef. One of the first things at the time greeting us was the abundance of young, American, men invading the city.  Our taxi driver informed us that there was a visiting aircraft carrier and other ship, in port to celebrate the 4th of july. The town was overrun. We grabbed some souvlaki (which is incredibly common in Australia — Melbourne has the second highest greek population in a city to Athens, no other Greek city) our first night and relaxed for awhile. The next day we visit this aboriginal village via gondola.  This had tourist trap written all over it — private shuttles taking you directly there, high entrance prices, and a village far enough away it would deem itself its own price haven. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as bad as I had feared. Sure it was really touristy, but somehow manageable.

We also had an opportunity to go to a sanctuary to see some Australian animals. My dad had been asking about seeing kangaroos, which I realized had already lost its novelty after living in a country where they are generally regarded only slightly higher than rodents (though, when you hit these rodents you total your car). The kangaroo highlights an integral part of what it is to be Australian — a conflict of image, that pride can be derived for a range of reasons.  Vegemite is adored as a truly Australian food and less for its culinary magic.  The story of ANZAC heroes is one of tragically poor UK-led military management. Stories of the outback, the bush, and nature, are often ones of death, of a complete lifecycle, of people being the land.  Some of these were covered in one of my Australian classes — it provided an interesting view of Australia.

But, I digress.. We were at a sanctuary — I got to hold a koala! And hand feed wallabies (mini kangaroos)! Koala’s have claws because they have to dig into trees, but I wasn’t really thinking about that, until it grabbed onto my skin and kept grabbing harder.. Finally, he was adjusted.  It was quite relaxed and content sitting there for a long time. Apparently they’re marsupials and not bears as is often assumed..

We later made it out to snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef.  Snorkeling at the reef, the only living structure visible from space, should be of epic proportions.  It was pretty awesome, but probably not as mind blowing as one might think, it’s almost impossible to see large, varying sections of reef in a short amount of time simply because it is so large.  The coral seemed substantially less colorful than the fish which were the most colorful I had ever seen.  I was blown away by this bright blue star fish just hanging out, it was pretty wild.

We hung out on the beach, headed back to Melbourne and explored there a little more before heading stateside.  The flight back was pretty rough.  I didn’t get out of my chair on the long 15 hour segment because I was afraid my legs would get used to movement and then hate sitting again… United, commonly referred to as companions of the devil, treated me reasonably, all my flights were on time, and my flight was the cheapest option.  Our in-flight entertainment was dreadful (no, I couldn’t choose, yes I know how awesome that is), but I survived.

Landed in LAX. Check. Customs. Check.  Get scam talked by bible-based “helpful” man looking for money for his “charity”. Check. Get stuck by TSA randomly stopping security checking for awhile. Check.  See Burrito and can’t resist. Check.Home. Check.

End of Australia

27 Photos

My semester here is quickly wrapping up and I head home very soon.  My dad is out here visiting me and we’re taking a mini whirlwind tour of Australia, at the moment we’re up in Queensland.

Several weeks ago, I decided I would go skiing.  After much investigation I decided the best place to ski (and heli-ski!) is New Zealand, I started to look at flights and how to get around.  Eventually I decided it would be difficult to manage and plan the trip without a definite, interested group.  I started looking around Victoria for the best local skiing and decided Mt. Buller provided a good compromise of skiing/convenience.  Unfortunately skiing in Australia is quite expensive (shared rooms are $60+, lift tickets are $96 or 77 for students, Rental is ~$40, food is at generally resort prices, and transportation is made more expensive by a resort “entrance fee” –  a way of collecting even more money).  That aside, I had my heart set on skiing and so I decided to pretty much just spur of the moment go for it.

With my reservations made a day before I left for my overnight trip, I packed my bags, grabbed some food and was ready for a fun trip.  I made it up to the mountain in the mid afternoon, I explored the resort for the afternoon and got ready for a good, full day of skiing the next.  I wake up early (read: 830AM) and get ready to go.  SNOW   It was great to be back on it, I took my series of chairlifts to the top and proceeded to ski as much of the mountain as I possibly could — it was only about half open.  The skiing wasn’t fantastic, I’ll be honest, but it was great to be skiing especially in late June.  A long day of skiing was a nice change, and I quickly found myself back on the way to Melbourne.

By now, many of my friends from the semester had started to leave, nearly every night was saying goodbye to one of my new friends.  It’s kind of a sad time, but at the same time we all know what a fantastic time we had this semester.

G and I had tentatively planned on visiting one of our friends Tim out in “the country” (a term in Australia meaning everything except one of the few major cities) — specifically a small town called Port Fairy. We hitched a ride with Tim and Flynn and were on our way.  It was a great feeling to be back in someones home — pets! home cooked meals! siblings! Living in student apartments often means some simple things in life are missed out on.  Port Fairy was a great little town, it’s known as a vacation town mostly, a summer-time retreat for Melbournians. Visiting in the winter, the town wasn’t overloaded, but was still a great time. We went fishing (yes, I caught a fish! It was enormous — ok, not at all), learned some new games, played beach cricket, and saw a different view of Australian life. It was a great way to spend a little time (though we might have stayed a bit longer without time constraints), I’m really glad I went.

Mt Buller-June 2009

Skiing Overnight trip to Mount Buller in Victoria, Australia

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That was last week.  I went with a group of friends (15 of us in all, wow!) to a tour of the East Coast of Australia.  We fly into Mackay (pronounced in Australian to finish with an I sound, we discover at the airport) and are instantly greeted by the smell of the ocean and warm weather.  The weather in Melbourne the past few weeks has slowly degraded and seems to rain all the time; I personally no longer believe there is a 12 year drought in Victoria. But I digress, we are instantly greeted by warm weather, sunshine, and that great smell.  We hop onto a Greyhound bus, first stop is Airlie Beach, our passageway to the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef.

Airlie Beach is a quintessential beach town, situated between beautiful beach and small mountain ridges and lined with palm trees its difficult to believe the warning signs of impending death via jellyfish and/or crocodile. Death by over-relaxation seems more likely. The plan is to get on a sail boat the following day, so we spend an afternoon relaxing, playing in the man-made lagoon (safe from the animals) and soaking the sun. Glorious. The next day we get up and work our way to our boat check-in. We gather last minute supplies and head off to the boat. Our ship is the Mandrake, our skipper, John, and our assistant Annie. We set off for a quick tour of the Whitsunday Islands.

We spend the first afternoon motoring to a bay where we’ll be staying the night. We hang out all afternoon, swimming, listening to music, and chatting. The next day we wake up to a surprisingly rocky boat on our way to the famous Whitehaven Beach.  We arrive at the bay of the Whitehaven Beach and dingy to shore.  A short trek finds us on the lookout – wow.  This is absolutely gorgeous, the water is amazingly blue, the sand amazingly white.  Best of all it looks so natural, you know tourist after tourist has set foot on this beautiful beach, but somehow it still looks pristine. We spend the morning goofing around on the beach, playing football in the ocean (an activity we do with surprisingy frequency — and it certainly gives away our nationality…). (If you look at my pictures, it should be obvious which beach I’m referring to). On our way back to the dingy  we are meeted by a crarb army, there are thousands of these small crabs coming out of their burrowed holes and making a run for the new low-tide water line, it’s pretty wild.

We’re soon at our snorkelling location for the afternoon. I could only find one fin that tould fit on my foot, there seemed to be almost exclusively small fins which doesn’t work well for our group. It was fun to be snorkelling again, their was tons of corral and plenty of fish. Unfortunately the water was pretty hazy so pictures were so-so, and also the reef wasn’t the typical nearly artificially ridiculous colors, but it was still fun. We finally got to do some sailing that afternoon and the next morning before we were back on dry land.

We grabbed our rental cars and stuffed our faces (it’s hard work relaxing at sea..) before heading off North.  We hustled our way up to Cairns, an 8+ hour drive, where we showed up still in time to clean up and enjoy a bit of the night life before continuing on North again the next day.  We work our way up to Port Douglas, perhaps the most touristy town I have ever been in.  Port Douglas consists of exclusively hotels and overpriced restaurants. But, I won’t complain for a second because it’s got a beautiful beach and our hostel was roughly a stonethrow away. We relax on the beach for an afternoon and do the usual (see: eat, football…). A fantastic sand castle was made — I napped instead.  Our last full day and we were off to explore the rainforest to the north.

Our first stop of the day was a crocodile tour –  we can’t go to Australia and not see crocodiles! We leave from this small town, the Daintree Village. This town is absolutely stuck in time — the tourists come and go but the town apparently stays the same.  I asked a store clerk how big the town was.. “Let me put it to you like this; our local school has 9 kids in it.” .. Wow, life moves a little differently here.  We’re off on our tour and see several crocodiles, some cool birds, and plenty of trees.  We push on north to Cape Tribulation and the heart of the rainforest. We see the beach of cape tribulation and decide the best way to explore the rain forest is to push on and find our own hiking path. The road soon turns to dirt — now we’re getting somewhere, and we push on until we round a bend and a sign that says “4WD Only past this point”. I look around the corner to see a creek several feet deep — we decide not to push the luck of our small SUV. We park and walk back to a trail spotted on the way. Mike screeches as he sees a huge bird ahead — a cassowary — and sprints off after it.

A cassowary is like a wild turkey.  Only it’s HUGE, the thing was massive, it could have been as big as a person.  The bird took off running into the bush, clearly uncomfortable with what had just happened.  When Mike comes back someone takes the pleasure of informing the group that the bird is deadly, apparently it jumps up and will use its talons to claw ones chest — glad we know that now..  We find the desired trail and head off into the rainforest, it eventually lets us out at a beach. We wander down the beach until it ends at another stream inlet — we do however find some freshly fallen coconuts and bring them back to our hostel as prizes of the day. Our adventure wraps up here as the afternoon is getting late and we have a drive ahead of us back to Port Douglas.

The next day we round up the troops and head back to Cairns where we catch our flight to Melbourne.  The trip we agree, was definitely, definitely, a success.

East Coast Australia-June 2009

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We grabbed our car in the afternoon on Monday and went to to our final destination on Monday and decided to see the road on the way back the next morning/day.

The towns along the road seem suspended in time. The people move at a different pace, and fit admirably in the coast side towns we weave through. My favorite interaction though was in our final town, Peterborough. We arrive their just before 9 and throw up our tent.  We realize its just after 9 and we have some time, since we’re in a campsite we decide to go somewhere light, maybe a grab a bite to eat.  Leaving the campground fines us staring at a tavern with the lights on, perfect. I walk in the front door to see one man eating at the bar and no one else to be seen, he looks at me somewhat puzzled.

“Are you open?” I ask

“No, we’re closed.”

“Is there anywhere else in town that would be open?”

He looks at me and can’t tell if I’m serious. “Not at this hour of the night” He chuckles, still surprised I could even think something like that. We walk away, I’m puzzled, I look down at my watch and find it glaring 9:20 back at me. Different pace. At least we were provided a few laughs at our lifestyle clashes…

The next day we start off relatively early, and work our way from the Bay of Martyrs back East. The coastline was generally stunning. The blue-ness of the water was quite impressive, perhaps growing up with the north Atlantic ocean makes other oceans seem that much more impressive. The Twelve Apostles are the most famous site along the road, and are certainly an epic view. They’re created because the pillars are of a harder rock than its surroundings which erode more quickly. We take a few hikes at the various locations, the “blow hole” was pretty interesting — water rushes into this hollowed out section several hundred feet from the rest of the coast, and the waves seem stuck inside.

We hiked to a waterfall later in the trip. The waterfall was in the middle of a rain forest, it felt like quite a jungle, it was an impressive site of natural beauty. The path to this particular waterfall was incredibly man made; a man-made metal pathway with high side railings seemed to be some sort of blend between science fiction and video games. In fact the path oddly reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder , where they had to stay on the path or risk changing the past.. (and future..)

We continue to cruise the coast line and observe the beauty, it is easy to see why the journey is one of Victoria’s famed tourist activities.  We were late returning the car which provided a nice life lesson: don’t be late returning car rental. They wanted to charge us for an extra day which we were able to talk down a bit, but it was relatively frustrating…  The trip was a lot of fun though, and I think it was best experienced by just renting a car and going for it.

Great Ocean Road

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